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I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

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Re: I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

#111

Post by kudokatz »

bellgrove wrote: post #82
VoidWhisperer wrote: post #56

This has probably already been said, but places that mandate that X% of people need to be put on performance improvement plans are not great. This can force managers (or HR, depends on who decides the PIP) to put otherwise good engineers or staff on PIP when they are perfectly fine employees - they may not be 10x, perfect, and can just be doing what they need to do to do their jobs, but they still aren't doing anythi…

I completely agree. Plus, part of Amazon's candidate evaluation is to consider whether they are (or clearly have potential to be) better than 50% of your peers, as part of the hiring bar. Between that and stack-ranking/forced-attrition, even previously high-performing employees can one day find themselves on the chopping block.

tl;dr: "You can't raise the bar if you can't pick the bar raisers. "

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21729619#21732841

Re: I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

#112

Post by PartiallyTyped »

bogdanu wrote: post #76
ddorian43 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What numbers?

I haven't worked there, but I've seen salary reports online between 1.5k-2k euros for a senior, after taxes, per month.

Seniors hit about 4-5k eur in Poland. Poland is far worse than Germany tbh.

Re: I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

#113

Post by FrustratedMonky »

CalRobert wrote: post #35
aestetix wrote: post #11

This seems common in American companies. I wonder how much of this is a result of lawsuit culture. For example, American companies won't tell job applicants why they get rejected, lest they get sued by the rejected candidates. And perhaps this has carried into feedback for actual employees. It sounds like the author wasn't even he was on a performance improvement plan, he had to infer it and pull it out of his manage…

This is random but I was recently rejected for a role from a company I find very interesting - https://www.overstory.com/ - and when I asked, the engineering manager gave me clear, detailed feedback on why (I don't have experience with satellite imagery tools like STAC, I accessed dict members with x['a'] instead of x.get('a', {}), and I didn't go in to depth on my takehome assignment.). I really appreciate it and me…

:x['a'] instead of x.get('a', {})

This seems like splitting hairs. Sure, maybe x.get is better, but would that be a deal breaker? Know you are just giving quick example, but this just struck a cord. Are jobs really so hard to get that employers can be that nit-picky?

Re: I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

#114

Post by trgdr »

capableweb wrote: post #101
andybak wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> demonstrates how far we are in our "late stage capitalism" and economic slaves, not free, not by half. I'm not sure what earlier periods of history you're comparing it to that were utopian in comparison but I am fairly certain they were pretty limited in range both geographically and temporally.

If you instead move laterally and look at other "modern" countries, instead of temporally, it's easy to see how the working class and more is getting exploited in the US.

Ehh if you look at other "modern" countries you see workers being paid half as much. Not to say that the US is any sort of paradise, but there are definitely tradeoffs that favor either direction.

Re: I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

#115

Post by lnsru »

bogdanu wrote: post #9
zakary wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money is a powerful motivator

Amazon pays less than local outsourcing companies in Eastern Europe. Faang salary my arse.

Romania? That’s why companies go there and other distant countries. To pay below market rate with huge press support. I experienced it first hand from Continental and Hella. If I have the same job in Germany, I will get normal salary. If I take job in eastern branch, I will get 1/3 salary. And local companies offered me 1/2. Obviously I stayed in Germany.

Re: I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

#116

Post by ballenf »

kudokatz wrote: post #105
rawling wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read through the article expecting this, but... if this is the case, it doesn't feel like they tried very hard? > I wasn't put on Pivot. My manager wanted to work with me a little bit to see if I was going to commit to the job. So they sat me down and said I could go on Pivot and leave right away, or they would work with me. > ... > I played along, and I'm good at playing along when I have to be. So then the money…

> if this is the case, it doesn't feel like they tried very hard? I don't think you get it. The way this stuff is done is just as described - totally blindsiding, and potentially flat-out gaslighting. There's no actual metrics or data until they fabricate a paper trail and force you out. You don't win these things. Rather, you take your money and go elsewhere. Then turn down the subsequent job offers you get from the…

But it sounds like he won? He got his $200k and found a new job before any PIP was implemented? Why would his manager have been upset if they were actually trying to force him out?

Surely HR knows how long it takes to exit someone and if they wanted to keep the $200k they would have started the process earlier?

Re: I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

#117

Post by aylmao »

regularfry wrote: post #91
aylmao wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had never thought of it that way, but you're right— firing is immediate but employees always feel the obligation to stick around for two weeks. It tends to be a weird two weeks too. If you know you're quitting you're usually already preparing for it prior— taking less responsibility, finding who to hand projects to, etc. In my experience at times it's just two uncomfortable weeks of showing up and doing nothing.

Assuming your last paycheck includes those two weeks, that's (almost certainly, in context) an $X,000 difference in what you walk away with. I could probably stomach hanging around for an extra fortnight even if X was quite small.

I guess it depends.

Personally, if it's a job I really dislike, I don't mind losing the extra $X,000. I've discovered through the years my mental health is worth a lot more. Once you leave a high-paying job for one that pays less, or even to just take a break and earn nothing, you start thinking about these sorts of little extras as inconsequential at best.

If the next job pays more than the last one, you could say it's a net loss for the employee too, since that's an extra two weeks one could've earned more.

But if neither of those apply, it's probably worth it to hang around and get some extra cash, or just get a couple more weeks of hanging at the job with "graduation goggles" and little work stress, yeah.

Re: I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

#118

Post by capableweb »

geraldwhen wrote: post #109
capableweb wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like a cultural quirk they have over there, where even though it's not stipulated by law, people need to stay at the place they're leaving for two weeks, no matter what, otherwise the optics are really bad, for whatever reason. But it only works one way, if you get fired you usually get fired immediately, no two weeks to find something else. In my mind, it just looks like employees have been getting the short…

I mean, it depends on what you need. If someone quit without notice, I’d still be a referral for them if they were good. We could all be laid off at any time.

> I mean, it depends on what you need. If someone quit without notice, I’d still be a referral for them if they were good.

But wouldn't you claim that this is not a very common view to hold about the process of quitting, in the US? I've lost count how many times I've heard managers/executives being pissed off because an employee left without a two week notice, and they treat that happening as some sort of failure, instead of just a normal thing.

Re: I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

#119

Post by ballenf »

bsenftner wrote: post #57
miningape wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking the same thing reading this article. In this case it seems it was pretty clearly meant to push this employee out before their stocks vest because its probably a lot cheaper to spend $100,000 hiring a new person than lose several 100's of thousands to a decent worker who has just been at the company for a while. While atrocious its very clear math, but I hope employees keep leaving after they vest.

How Amazon's behavior here, clearly mandated as official corporate policy, is not an instant class action lawsuit demonstrates how far we are in our "late stage capitalism" and economic slaves, not free, not by half.

In earlier times, they'd just fire you without any kind of PIP process.

Are you saying that PIP vs. immediate firing is worse?

Re: I worked in Amazon HR and was disgusted at what I was seeing with PIP plans

#120

Post by wavemode »

bratbag wrote: post #75

So stepping back from the unreliable narrator of a person living through this with ptsd: -person is suffering mental health issues due to strain of job. -persons performance drops rapidly without warning as a result. -boss takes workload off them without putting them on a pip process, to give them time to work through their issues. -person quits right after stocks vest which upsets boss who put extra effort into help…

If it were some random company, I'd say your scenario is plausible. But with Amazon, I happen to know that everything written in this article is 100% accurate to their real PIP process.
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